Likeness in the sky
By Brandon Davis
Published in News on July 27, 2016 1:46 PM
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Retired Col. Kevin "Uncle" Fesler talks about a painting in which he is depicted flying an F-15E Strike Eagle. "Nowhere to Hide" by Keith Ferris hangs in the hallway of the LaFevers Dental Team in Goldsboro.
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Fesler displays a flight helmet that commemorates his time as a fighter pilot with the "Rogue Squadron" in 1999.
Retired Col. Kevin "Uncle" Fesler spotted someone familiar in a painting at LaFevers Dental Team two months ago.
Fesler met with Dr. Scott LaFevers for an initial teeth cleaning, but upon leaving, he saw a 17-year-old painting of an F-15E Strike Eagle. He asked LaFevers if he knew the pilot in the painting.
Fesler smiled before LaFevers could answer.
"I retired, and I needed a dentist and I'm like, 'I'll go see Scott'," Fesler said, who met LaFevers through the Military Affairs Committee, for which LaFevers is the committee's chair. "And he goes, 'Let me show you some of this art.' I'm sure he had 10 patients waiting on him because every painting, I knew something about it.
"So he's showing me around the office, and I keep stopping, telling the history about it. I'm sure his patients were like, 'Hey man, come pull this tooth or whatever.' We get to that one, and it's one of those things where you forget about it because the picture was taken in 1999."
On April 19 of that year, Fesler -- a native of Bloomfield, Indiana -- flew the fighter jet depicted in the painting over northern Iraq for the Operation Northern Watch mission to destroy surface-to-air missiles used by Saddam Hussein.
Airmen of the 336th Fighter Squadron -- "The World Famous Fighting Rocketeers" -- flew jets capable of releasing two AGM-130 bombs that detected Iraqi weapons from 30 miles away.
But only five Rocketeers joined Fesler in the air that day.
Capt. Dave "Piff" Piffarerio flew with Maj. Ken "Hud" Hudleston, who snapped the picture of Capt. Fesler and Capt. Jeff "Fuzzy" Hubbell's jet. Lt. Col. Dave "Miner" Poole and Maj. Jeff "JD" Brown hovered above Fesler when the camera flashed.
The six pilots wanted future airmen to know the history of the Rocketeers through art, so they contacted aviation painter Keith Ferris. Ferris painted the fighter jet with a missile on both sides that mirrored the jet flown by Fesler, but two weeks later, critical changes were made to the Strike Eagle.
The Rocketeers went rogue.
They stripped one missile from the jet and replaced it with a 4,000-pound fuel tank for the jet to last longer in the air. But the release of a missile during an attack would cause the jet to wobble with the majority of the weight coming from the right wing.
Fesler said he could control the unbalanced jet, but the asymmetrical configuration was not approved by the squad commander at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. The pilots continued to fly illegally -- dubbing themselves "The Rogue Squadron."
Fesler mailed letters to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, asking for the disfigured jet to be tested. The jet was tested and approved.
On May 2, 1999, Hudleston took a picture of Fesler flying the rogue jet over Kobani, Syria. It would be one of the last photographs taken of the jet before the squadron left Iraq in July to return home.
Three years later, Hudleston met British painter Ronald Wong met at the Oxford Club in Great Britain and described the picture to the artist. Wong drew on a bar napkin the image of the jet dropping one bomb, and Hudleston asked Wong to paint a portrait.
"We all wanted this portrait especially -- and this is not to exclude the other guys -- but the six of us that were on that mission, we've been friends for many years, we remained friends, we're the oldest guys, we're the experienced group," Fesler said. "So we wanted it."
Hudleston, who lives next door to Fesler, hung Wong's "Rockets Over Kobani" in his house.
Fesler has his own memorabilia as well, but the Ferris painting -- "Nowhere to Hide" -- is at LaFevers Dental Team.
LaFevers said he purchased the painting nine months ago from Dr. Roy Heidicker's war art gallery in Goldsboro to decorate the dental office after it was renovated and new hallways were added. LaFevers said he purchased it unaware Fesler would be depicted in a painting, but he said an airman flying an F-15E Strike Eagle could only be from Seymour Johnson..
"I was proud, I wanted him to see all this," LaFevers said. "Of course he could tell me more about it than I could. I just wanted any entail I could get from it. We got to that painting, and he had sort of a smirk on his face. I go, 'What?' and he goes, 'That's me'."
But before Fesler flew a fighter jet, he knew in the fourth grade he would one day become an airman.
"I don't ever remember wanting to do anything else," he said. "When I was a grade schooler, we had to do a book report like most grade schoolers. I went to a very small school and we had a library, and I went in and got a book on airplanes, aviation.
"There were pictures and something about the Wright Brothers, and that's my first memory, but I honestly don't remember wanting to do anything else."
Fesler graduated from an engineering school in Bloomfield, but he eventually joined Seymour Johnson in 1990 with the Air Force ROTC.
Fesler retired from the Air Force in the fall of 2014 to spend time with his family. Fesler said leaving the Air Force was a tough decision, but "I reached a point where I had to choose my family before my service," he said.